I’ve been worrying about the sad fate of the mega-rich recently. No one seems to care about them. I should say from the outset that there is no personal agenda here, as I’m most unlikely to join their ranks. Quite the reverse, in fact. I get poorer by the day. A few years ago, I only had to keep an eye out to make sure humans didn’t relieve me of my money unnecessarily, but now I now find I’m regularly seen off by machines. Every time I buy a ticket for a gig or a theatre, for example, a computer pockets a few quid. This is particularly irritating, because you can’t poke a machine in
the eye.
Last week, I tried to book four tickets from the HMV site at £15 each. Although my mathematics is not of Einsteinian proportions, I went to school before they gave away calculators with breakfast cereals and so I have some agility with simple mental arithmetic. So I can say with some confidence that 15 times 4 equals 60.
Not according to HMV, it isn’t. It is, in fact, £67.85. This seemed an odd amount for a machine to half-inch, so I delved further. The first £6 went on a £1.50 booking fee for each ticket. I am already resentful. I’m being charged for doing the work of someone HMV should employ. Call me old-fashioned, but I am an adherent of the system whereby if I work for someone, they pay me.
But this apart, what about the other £1.85? This is a delivery charge, applicable because I am picking up the tickets at the box office. Hello? As I am picking them up myself, there is no delivery involved. So I am charged £1.85 for non-delivery. This is disturbing. Will HMV start sending me invoices for a range of goods I do not have delivered? I feel I am being lured into a surreal world. And listening to the Tories at their Manchester conference accentuated this sense of global unreality.
It was also when I began to be concerned about the fate of the obscenely well-heeled. You see, no one likes them. Not even their mates.
This became apparent when Iain Duncan Smith casually announced that: “You might legitimately say that we Conservatives are the party of the poor.” Who? What? Pardon?
I was delighted to find that IDS made this extravagant claim at a meeting arranged by the Centre for Social Justice think tank. To demonstrate his kinship with poverty, it was he who set it up. That’s the way to do it. Set up an organisation and then speak at it. That’s the power of money.
Not that Duncan Smith comes from a mega-rich background himself. But he did take the precaution of marrying into the Cottesloe family – folk who are what is technically known in fiscal circles as “stinking”. Demonstrating his affiliation with the poor, he doesn’t seem keen to advertise this. On his own website, it simply says: ‘Iain married Betsy in 1982 and they have four children” – omitting to mention that “Betsy” is the offspring of Commander John Tapling Fremantle, Fifth Baron Cottesloe, Sixth Baron Fremantle, a recent Lord-Lieutenant of Buckinghamshire and not short of a couple of bob. Iain also felt it prudent not to mention that he sits in a Cabinet made up of more millionaires than women.
But the “party of the poor” claim did worry me on one level. If they are abandoned by the Tories, who is going to look after the filthy rich? No one takes any notice of their former cheerleaders, the “relaxed” Peter Mandelson and the avaricious Tony Blair, who always displayed a lively interest in the rich and their homes.
So who is going to look after the obscenely wealthy? If Iain Duncan Smith sticks to his word and aligns the Tories with the poor, their interests will hardly be represented in the House of Commons. My only consolation is that at least they still own the Upper House.
